He was opposed to the federal expansion of the New Deal, and was a prominent intra-party voice in opposition to the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

His grandfather, Joseph Miner Ely, was one of the founders of Westfield's important whip industry, and his father, a lawyer, was active in Democratic party circles in heavily Republican western Massachusetts.

[1] Ely was active in the state Democratic Party, and was in 1922 put forward as a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts; he placed a distant third in the primary, which was won by John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald.

His primary opponent, Harry Dooley, had been asked to withdraw so that the party could present an ethnically diverse and geographically balanced ticket, but his name remained on the ballot, and he ended up winning the nomination because of the support of Irish Americans.

He was opposed in this by the aging Honey Fitz, who was little more than a proxy candidate for former Boston mayor James Michael Curley.

The Republicans were harmed politically by the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the start of the Great Depression, and were further divided over the issue of Prohibition.

Other policies advocated by Ely included substantial reductions in state salaries during the depression, which was met with overwhelming legislative resistance.

[9] The divisive and at times acrimonious intra-party strife between Curley and the Ely-Walsh wing of the Democratic Party contributed to the state's difficulties in securing federal relief funds.

[11] He remained active in state and national Democratic politics, continuing to oppose Roosevelt's New Deal policies,[9] which he considered "dangerously socialistic".